How ERP Evolved: MRP, MRP II, ERP, and the Cloud Era | ERP for Beginners Ep 2

Episode two of ERP for Beginners. Vendor-neutral history of Enterprise Resource Planning — five decades, five eras. Starting from 1960s inventory tracking on IBM mainframes, through MRP and MRP II, into the 1990s birth of ERP proper, and the ongoing shift to cloud and SaaS. Why history matters: every modern ERP's terminology (BOM, MRP run, work order, routing, general ledger posting) was coined in the 1970s and 1980s. Understanding where the language came from makes the screens of today's products click faster. What You'll Learn: - 1960s inventory control — mainframes, punch cards, paper reports; recording stock, not planning - 1970s MRP — Material Requirements Planning; the first software that actually planned - 1980s MRP II — capacity, shop-floor control, finance integration; the whole factory in one system - 1990s ERP (Gartner coined the term in 1990) — HR, procurement, sales, CRM; whole-enterprise - 2000s+ cloud era — NetSuite (1998) and Workday (2005) were cloud-native; incumbents rebuilt to catch up - The four things that flipped with cloud — delivery, cost model, upgrade cycle, and access Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:12 - What's in this episode 0:30 - 1960s — Inventory control on mainframes 1:10 - 1970s — MRP, the first leap into planning 1:55 - 1980s — MRP II, the whole factory 2:40 - 1990s — ERP proper, enterprise-wide 3:30 - 2000s+ — Cloud / SaaS shift 4:20 - Recap — five eras, one lineage 4:55 - What's next: Episode 3 — The core modules Key Takeaways: 1. Inventory control (1960s) gave us a digital ledger for stock. The software recorded; humans planned. 2. MRP (1970s) introduced planning. Explode a bill of materials into time-phased purchase orders. 3. MRP II (1980s) added capacity, shop-floor routing, and finance integration. The factory in one system. 4. ERP (1990s, term coined by Gartner in 1990) extended the pattern to every department — HR, procurement, sales, CRM, project accounting. SAP R/3, Oracle Applications, PeopleSoft. 5. Cloud / SaaS (2000s+) flipped delivery to multi-tenant, cost to subscription, upgrades to continuous, and access to browser/mobile. NetSuite and Workday led; incumbents followed with S/4HANA Cloud, Fusion Cloud, Dynamics 365. Next in the series: Episode 3 — The core modules. Finance, inventory, sales, procurement, manufacturing, HR, reporting — what each one does and how they share data. Taught by CelesteAI. Like and subscribe for the rest of the series.